“It’s going to take a while,” ESPN analyst and former Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi said Friday on SportsCenter. “And it will only take a while when certain players come back. In the passing game you’ve got [Shane] Vereen, [Rob] Gronkowski and [Danny] Amendola. And all of these players are gone, so you bring in these players that are young, that aren’t familiar.

“You could see last night there are problems within the passing game in terms of catching the ball, running the wrong routes, not judging the ball properly in the air. Some of these are fundamental problems with the receivers and then the other problems are scheme and not being on the same page with your quarterback.

“You see a lot of frustration here by Brady. But he has to know, too, these are rookies here. They don’t have the same standard that Tom Brady has for himself and he has to know it’s going to take a little bit more time.”

Bruschi said Thursday was a “worst-case scenario” for the young wideouts. Not only did they have to get on the same page with a demanding quarterback, they had to try to catch a slippery ball in driving rain.

“All the thinking that’s going on with those guys post-snap,” Bruschi explains. “‘Where does Tom want me to be?’ ‘Where do I go based on my post-snap read in terms of my coverages?’ And then the rain came down, so as you’re thinking where you want to be, all of a sudden you forget that when it’s raining and your gloves are wet and your hands are wet, that’s when you have to focus even more on catching the ball. That’s a process these young receivers weren’t ready for."